


A conversation, two ways

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU, Brainwashing, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Dissociation, Hobo Bucky, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, One teeny kiss, Self-Harm, Smutlessness, Suicide Attempt, super sappy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 12:21:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1688195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation, two ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A conversation, two ways

When Steve first sees him, they’re both on the street. His phone has just buzzed in his pocket and he’s pulled it out to see what it wants from him this time. He almost misses the man in the hooded sweatshirt who is walking toward him. Almost. It must be the way he moves that makes Steve look up. He knows it’s Bucky, even with the greasy hair that’s hanging in his eyes. Can smell the gunmetal scent under the stink of old sweat. Stops dead.

“Bucky.”

Bucky pauses mid-stride, eyes shift to look at him. “Thought you were a dream,” he says quietly and then goes on by. He does not look back at Steve and Steve stands for a moment in an agony of indecision. His phone buzzes again. He looks down, then back at Bucky, but by then he’s gone.

 

*

 

"What, you think he wants to come in or something?" Tony asks. He's face-down in something with a lot of wires, a thin thread of solder-smoke drifting up from the workbench.

"No, I don't think that's what it is," Steve answers.

"Too bad. I'd love to get a look at that arm." Tony steps back and looks at his work. Steve looks at him. "What?" he asks.

"Look, if I can bring him in, can I bring him here?"

Tony laughs. "Jesus Christ, SHIELD's gonna go fucking bananas."

"So that's a yes?"

"Absolutely. As long as I get to see the arm."

 

*

 

The next time it’s raining. He’s coming back from a Memorial Day event, head pounding with the misery of memory. Everyone hurries along the sidewalks. Everyone except for the guy sitting where the alley spills out to the street, sodden grey hoodie sagging like it's made of paper. He is holding his left arm as if it aches.

Steve stops where he stands and waits until the hooded face looks up. Bucky’s eyes are thin slits, feverish bright. All the devil-may-care that used to be there is gone, nothing but scars left. When Steve starts forward, Bucky flinches back, pushing himself up the wall to get to his feet. People studiously ignore them.

“Don’t run,” Steve says. “Please.”

They’re silent for a moment. Then Bucky’s mouth tightens. “Something’s wrong,” he says in a rasping voice. He’s still holding his arm. He's shaking too. Maybe from the cold and the wet, maybe because everything is telling him to either kill Steve or to run from him.  


“I know people who can help," Steve says softly.

"SHIELD.”

"Yeah."  


Bucky recoils, eyes suddenly wide. Then he’s baring teeth like a trapped animal. “ _No_."

"Buck-"

"Leave me the fuck alone,” he snarls.

“Christsakes Bucky, just _listen_ to me.”

“Hey dude,” someone says. Steve turns. It’s a guy almost as big as he is, jaw forward, eyes narrow. “The guy asked you to leave him alone.”

When he looks back Bucky’s gone.  


 

*

 

"He won't go to a hospital."

"No, of course not." Banner is doing that thing he does where he pulls at pieces of his hair.

"He doesn't trust SHIELD."

A flicker of a smile. "I can understand that."

"If I can get him to you, will you treat him? Here, I mean? Quietly?"

"Steve, you know I'd never turn down someone in need. But I am not a psychologist, and I'm not a robotics engineer. I'm a physician."

"I can look after the rest if you can do the doctor part."

Banner inclines his head. "Yes. I can do the doctor part."

"Thanks," Steve says. He gets up to leave.

"How are you going to bring him in?" Banner asks. Steve frowns. "I ask because I'd like to have an idea of the damage I'm going to be dealing with."

"I've asked Nat."

Banner nods. "Ah," he says. "When?"

"She's on standby."

 

*

 

The third time he’s in the park, catching his breath after a hard run, thinking about how he’s going to have to get new shoes soon, when Bucky sits on the bench beside him. He was waxy-faced before, now he’s flushed and greasy. He’s holding his arm like it’s a dead thing.

“It’s broken,” he says. His voice is soft and small. He cracks a kind of smile that shows his stained teeth, more of a grimace than a grin.

“Can I see?”

Bucky hesitates. Then he tugs the collar of the filthy hoodie. He’s not wearing a shirt under there, so Steve sees pale skin dotted with red specks, flea or bedbug bites. That’s nothing to the place where the metal and the flesh are sutured together. There’s a scar there, a hell of a scar, and that scar bulges in an abnormal way. The skin is translucent and taut, stretched to its capacity and tearing in places. Small wounds cluster around a small thing protruding from the skin. A wire, and a ridge of metal. Something broken, working its way out of the skin, or some piece of shrapnel that won’t come out. The wounds weep a yellow sludge that stinks like summertime garbage, the skin around is threaded with red.

He tries not to panic. He tries not to let his face show anything. “I’ve got a friend who’s a doctor. Not at a hospital. Private.”

"SHIELD."

"Bruce Banner. And Stark can take a look at the arm."

"SHIELD," he says again. Bucky gets up. It looks like it’s an effort.

“You know I’m not going to let you die,” Steve says. Bucky turns and looks at him.

“Try and stop me,” he whispers.

Steve reaches into his pocket for his phone. "Nat," he says when she answers. "I need you."

"Already moving, old man."

She hangs up and Steve sits holding his phone and waiting.

 

*

 

He does not know where she finally caught up with him, only that it's done. She calls, still breathless. "Package for a Mister S. Rogers at Stark Tower." He can hear the satisfaction.

"Is he alive?" He covers his face with his hand as he asks.

"For some values of 'alive', I guess yeah." All the warm pleasure drains from her voice. "He's a fucking mess. You sure about this?"

"I'm sure. I owe you one, Nat."

She laughs and hangs up.

 

*

 

Bucky’s lying there in a bed that looks, frankly, too large for him, with IV drips standing sentinel and both hands cuffed to the metal bedside bars. He must be sedated; his eyes are closed.

They've scrubbed him clean, gotten rid of the stinking, filthy clothes. Someone has stitched a wound that went down the length of his cheek to the corner of his mouth, and another that’s near his badly-blackened eye. There’s a huge white bandage over the place where his arm and flesh join up, and it’s already stained in places. He’s gaunt. He looked lean and hungry before, but now he looks starved.

But it’s him. Steve would know that face anywhere, even under the swelling and bruising and stitching, even under long, greasy hair and at least a week’s worth of beard. He goes to the bedside, hooks the visitor’s chair with one foot and drags it over. It howls on the lino, and one of the guards looks over to see what’s making the racket, then he turns eyes-front again.

The noise of the chair rouses Bucky, at least a little bit. God knows what they’re pumping him full of, god knows what the dose must be to keep him lying still and groggy like this. But his eyes open just a fraction and Steve knows that Bucky can see him. He exhales something not quite a noise, not exactly a sigh. Steve would give anything for that sound to be his name but it’s not. Bucky closes his eyes again, and when he does he lets his head list gently to one side, facing him.  


Steve drops into the chair, covers one of Bucky’s cool, cuffed hands with his own. He leans close, kisses Bucky’s temple where the skin is unbruised. The fingers tighten just a little.

 

________

 

At first it is a nightmare. The stranger/mission/target/Steve assigns to him a name after that he can not longer function. Everything goes wrong. It’s a funny thing, but dreams are funny, and this has to be a dream. He must be dreaming in cryo or perhaps he is in the chair. The scored linoleum floor he lies on cannot be the burnt-out remains of a safe-house. Such things simply do not occur. He must be dreaming, in the chair.

His shoulder is a constant pain. He supposes they are doing some kind of maintenance on it. Perhaps he damaged it in the last mission. Perhaps this is punishment for failure. It is a guess only, but that is what one does, isn’t it? One hurts the thing that is not working so that it will work again. He supposes it must be so, or he would have no other purpose.

 _Bucky Bucky Bucky Bucky Bucky_ he turns the memory of the word over and over in his mind. There is something that is outside of his understanding about it. Not just a word, like _knife_ or _water_. Not when said, breathed out, quite like that. His head is full of memories. It’s oppressive, all the sights and smells and sounds, the words, the things. He wonders if they will wipe him clean when they are done with the arm. Perhaps he did fail, and this is part of the punishment too.

 

He cannot stay on the linoleum floor where the burn marks make constellations. Last night there were footsteps on the stair, now there is a girl’s corpse on the landing, her neck gapes open like a smile. He knows bone deep that he cannot be found. In her backpack there was a grey and hooded sweatshirt and food wrapped in plastic. He ate the things in plastic. He threaded his arm through the sweatshirt sleeve because it would not simply go. It hurts. He wishes they were done with fixing it. He wishes they were not punishing him. He wishes he knew if he the mission had succeeded or had failed.

He’s never been out so long, and his head is full of memories. He knows the street he walks down, and knows there is a long, dark alley that doglegs toward the subway. These are not things given to him, they are things he remembers. He must be dreaming. No one could remember so many things.

He wonders how much memory he has. He goes searching for the most distant ones. He goes looking for the stranger/mission/target/Steve because there is something old about his face. Because he does not know if the mission succeeded or if it failed. Because he wants to know if this is punishment or reward.

He finds him on a familiar street and stranger/mission/target/Steve glances up at him. His eyes go wide.

“Bucky,” he says. 

A memory of long ago: Someone once told him that you cannot read things when you dream. And yet stranger/mission/target/Steve is wearing a shirt that says _US Army._ He does not know how he knows what those words mean. He does not know how he could be reading.

“I thought you were a dream,” he says. Something hot rises in his chest and he realizes he is afraid. If this is not a dream he does not know what it can be, all he knows is that he must not be found, never be found. He makes himself disappear.

 

*

 

All day he wonders why they punish him like this. He cannot understand. Cannot understand why they don’t just make him do it again. Over and over and _over_ again. Until he does it right. Until his teeth are broken and he is breathing in his own blood. Until he _learns_. _His_. _Lesson_. He trembles, thinking of it. The pain in his shoulder, the pain in his shoulder. Perhaps they are being kind.

It is late when he finds a cafe with a back door propped open, finds a storeroom inside. He finds wooden shelving piled high and heavy with dust. It is safe here. He crouches there and waits. He’s pretty sure that you can’t dream inside a dream, but he does. He dreams of eating. He dreams of food. Of a kitchen he once knew, and the smell of roasting meat. He wakes with saliva pouring from his mouth, his shirt soaked and cold, his stomach knotted like a fist.

There are noises beyond the store room. He rises from his hiding place. It is not easy. His legs don’t work right. They feel like he feels, which he supposes is _tired._ Someone shouts as he slips through the door and back out to the early morning and the alley. He must disappear again.

He must be in the chair, has to be. He has failed. This pain is to correct him. The pain is because they are fixing him. But it’s been days, days, and even when when he knew rebellion, even before the muzzle and the shocks, he does not think they punished him for days. He is aware that something is not as it ought to be.  


He is not to touch the workings of the arm, but when he is sheltered by the fragrant, blooming shrubs that hug a park perimeter, he looks down at it. He has to crane to see the place below the knob of his shoulder where something is sticking out of skin. It is not the workings of the arm, it is flesh. When he is on a mission, he is permitted to care for that.

It is metal, the thing in his shoulder. A piece of metal with a curling edge, and he has seen such injuries before. Shrapnel. The metal deformed like wet paper, torn all to ridges and to razor edges. He takes it in his fingers and he pulls. It comes grudgingly up a little. The skin beneath bulges. There is more hidden than he can see. He still has his knife, slits open skin. The pain startles him. It brings the world into sharp relief, the wound under his hand, the metal piece. He hears himself gasp from the shock of it. If he is in the chair he cannot tell. No one says anything.

Blood wells up and spills down. He uses his shirt to catch it, digging fingers in to grip the slippery metal. He pulls. The pain is an old pain, a terrible pain. A pain not limited to a wound and shrapnel. He pulls once more, hard, and something deep in the suture of his arm and of his flesh tears audibly. The metal comes up and stops again. Now there is a wire sticking out of his shoulder, and the metal piece protrudes like a cat’s ear beside it. Blood flows around it and the pain takes his breath away. He should cut it out, excise it, but his hands will not obey him. It’s too tangled with the workings of the arm. He is not to touch it.

He lies panting and vomiting and wishing they would just finish with him and wipe his mind again. He'll trade all his new memories to forget this.  


 

He does sleep, a little, and when he wakes he touches his shoulder with a wariness he didn’t know he possessed. He is glad he did because it _hurts_ and when he touches it something animal and instinctive in him says _No_. He doesn’t understand why they’re not fixing it. How is he supposed to complete his mission if his arm doesn’t work? He is not allowed to do it himself. _Please,_ he whispers. He knows it is a thing that people say, that he has said. But he would take a beating now if it meant that he was in the chair and dreaming. _Please,_ he says again.

It doesn’t help.

 

More sleep. This time someone wakes him. A young woman, white, freckled, with glossy brown hair. She smiles nervously. She’s almost bent double, head near her knees, to look at him where he lies under the bushes. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Maria. Street outreach. Can I leave this lunch here for you?”

She sets down a brown paper bag sagging sadly in the drizzle. He sits up. She is watching him, watching him the way you might watch a stray dog or a wild animal. That smile again. Quick, but kind. “If you need anything, medical attention or some hot coffee, or you just want to talk, the van’s over at the parking lot, ok? Take care of yourself.”

It must be a dream. It has to be a dream.

Inside the bag there is an apple, a sandwich, a box of juice, and a granola bar just like the one he took from the girl he killed.

 

 

 _Take care of yourself_ is a kind of order. It is possible it’s a direct order. It’s possible they cannot get to him, not yet, and that they want him to stay alive, so they sent her to deliver it. Perhaps she’s an asset too. He keeps that thought, holds it, turns it over until the edges are soft, thinking, thinking about how he is going to obey. There were no instructions, he must improvise. _I won’t fight you_. He thinks of Steve, the mission, the target, the one who started all of this. The one who wouldn’t hurt him, who ruined everything. He thinks of where he found him last time. That’s where he goes.

He can't seem to stay awake, so he doesn’t notice him at first. It’s the change in pace, the sudden stop of a steady tread that alerts him, wakes him. He looks up. Familiar face. Mission. Target. Steve.

“Don’t run,” he says. “Please.”

He has his orders. Sort of orders. The only orders he’s had for a long time. _Take care of yourself_. Maybe after this they will come for him, and fix his arm and wipe his mind again. He works up the words, they must be in English. “Something’s wrong.” He grips his arm at the elbow because he can’t bear to touch the shoulder now.

“I know people who can help," Mission/target/Steve’s allies are not his allies.

"SHIELD.”

"Yeah."

The enemy. They will take him in and they will tear open his arm and learn everything. “ _No_."

"Buck-"

He should not be here. He should not be visible. He cannot fight, his orders are to _take care of yourself._ He must get away. “Leave me the fuck alone,” he snarls.

“Christsakes Bucky, just _listen_ to me.”

“Hey dude,” someone says. Mission/target/Steve turns aside and it is enough to allow escape.

 

He has too many orders. He has too many memories. His head is ruined, useless, so loud all he can hear is the screaming inside. He has never been out so long, he had never had to operate so long. _Please,_ he says even though he knows it’s useless, _please._ Someone throws some change down on the sidewalk where he’s sitting, crumpled with exhaustion. Someone tells him to get a fucking job. Someone spits, someone whispers, _that’s why you don’t do drugs, baby._ Someone squats down beside him. A man dressed in a dark suit, hair and skin almost the same hue, a white collar that gleams.

“You don’t look very good, friend,” he says. “It’s getting late. Do you have somewhere to go?”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what his orders are or what they _mean_ or which one he has to do first, he doesn’t know.

“I tell you what. Come with me down to the shelter and get some hot food in you and see how you feel.”

He is grateful, so grateful, that all he must do is obey.

 

 

He lies on the bed, in the shelter dormitory, where the lights are dim but not off, and the noises are soft but not still. He lies there any thinks. He thinks about his shoulder, they way it is starting to turn. Not aching any more, burning like a fever, and oozing pus. Perhaps he has broken it beyond repair. Perhaps there will be no more missions, and there will be no more clear, clean mind. Perhaps that woman's orders were not really orders at all.

He understands then that this is the end, the part when people sometimes try to run or try to hide.

When he realizes it, something in him shifts, a piece falls into place. There is a final set of orders he must follow. The fail-safe. The dead-man switch. He is broken. Assets must not fall into enemy hands. He knows what he must do and desperately does not want to do it. In the bathroom he sneaks a look at his shoulder, the wire gleaming and copper in a sea of putrid flesh. If he could fix it he would not be useless. He could go back to them. But he can’t touch the wire. There are only the final orders, and he must follow them.

 

 

He goes to the park. He knows that Steve goes there when the weather is good, and he runs. He is not disobeying orders, not really. He will obey. He will.

He waits until Steve is done with running and worn out and then he goes to the bench and sits beside him. Steve looks at him. He is red-faced and sweat hangs like meltwater from his hair. His eyes flick down and then back up. He’s wondering about the arm.

“It’s broken,” he says. He wants Steve to understand.

“Can I see?”

He considers this. Under normal circumstances no, never, but if there are no more orders it is because he is of no use any more, superseded or obsolete. Besides, he has seen the arm before. He tugs the collar of his sweater side and Steve looks down at the mess that is his shoulder. The healthy red flush goes out of his face. His mouth sets hard against his teeth.

“I’ve got a friend who’s a doctor,” he says. His hands are open, empty. “Not at a hospital. Private.”

He knows what that means. “SHIELD,” he says. The enemy.

"Bruce Banner. And Stark can take a look at the arm."

Assets must not fall into the hands of the enemy.

“SHIELD," he says again.

He has orders. Orders. He knows what he must do, knows it in his bones.

Steve’s mouth opens like he’s going to yell, but he doesn’t. “You know I’m not going to let you die,” he says instead.

He looks at Steve. He wonders how, in the jumble of the noise roaring in his head, he thought to go find him, but he is desperately glad he did. He cannot ask; he is an asset and not a liability. _Please_ is a useless word. He has orders that he must obey, and they do not permit requests for mercy.

He drags in all that's left to him. “Try and stop me," he whispers.

 

 *

 

She is the one who comes for him. He is fevered and sick and staring at the knife on the ground before him. Not looking for enemies, not thinking of anything except how he must obey and how desperately he does not want to _._

 _“You’re lucky,”_ she whispers an instant before she has the needle in his thigh, before everything dark and warm comes rushing up.

 

*

 

He is waking up. Some noise has shaken him out of sleep. Perhaps out of cryo. Perhaps.

He does not want to open his eyes. There are things about the dream that he does not want to lose. But he knows better than to lie here, knows he will be punished if he lies here. His shoulder no longer hurts. They must have fixed it. At last.

He opens his eyes. Everything is much brighter than it ought to be. Things painted white and edged with chrome. He is not in the chair, though his arms are still restrained. He looks for an answers, sees Steve there. _Thought it was a dream,_ he wants to say, but something has made his whole body heavy with sleep and he can’t make the words, not in any language, though he does manage a sort of sound that makes Steve smile. He closes his eyes, hears the sound of Steve settling in the chair, feels a hand cover his. The hand over his is warm and real. He grips it.

A kiss, like a parent to a child, on his temple. If this is dreaming in the chair, he doesn't want to wake.


End file.
